Last Christmas Eve was a very sunny and hot Friday. I had been metal detecting in my
favorite beach, Barra da Tijuca, for about three hours, with no luck, just the usual abundance of bottle caps, pull tabs, and some coins, when a guy came up to me and asked whether I was metal detecting. I said yes and he asked me if I could do him a big favor and try to find the wedding band he had just lost in dry sand near the place where we were. I said it would be a pleasure to find it. There, he told me he was playing volleyball with his family and upon hitting the ball, he felt his band fly through the air but he could not see exactly where it landed. Everybody, including his wife, three kids and even his mother in law had searched the ring for about an hour when he saw me and could not believe I had a metal detector.
I started searching on the spot he told me it had landed. After about fifteen minutes of search in the area where they “thought” it was. (they did not really think I would find it….his wife told me they had dug the area so much, the ring would probably be too deep to be found. And I said that if the coil went over it, I would find it).
I then did a grid search and………bingo…..on my third marking of the grid. Needless to say they got very excited and could not believe I had the guy`s band in my scoop.
His wife told me it was like winning the lottery because they had never seen someone metal detecting and just when her husband loses his ring a man with a metal detector shows up and recovers what they already considered lost forever. They gave me a reward, which I had not asked, and everybody was very happy.